For hundreds of Dallas-area kids Saturday, Legos became more than simply construction material for plastic pirate ships in primary colors.

Students ages 9 to 14 at the fifth annual North Texas FIRST Lego League Championship Robotics Tournament used the iconic plastic bricks to unlock real-world solutions to basic problems.

Presented by the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, the competition drew dozens of teams from area elementary and middle schools to the Hockaday School, where the event has been held the last several years.

Each team used Lego robotics kits, technical smarts and teamwork to build a small robot with small motors and sensors, which had to execute several small tasks based on computer programming fed to it through a USB connection.

“What’s so tricky about it is, you can’t fix [the programming] while it’s running in the game,” said Christian Williams, 13, a student at Denton’s Strickland Middle School. “It has to be dead-on exact.”

Hard work on programming and design are hallmarks of a successful team, said Teresa Lenling, director of public programs at the Perot Museum. Judges ask students questions during the competition to make sure that they, and not their coaches or sponsors, built the machines.

“They ask them: ‘Why did you approach the table in this way?’ ‘Why did you select to do this component first?’ ‘Who was responsible for programming what?’” Lenling said. “They have to explain their team and how they work together.”

“A lot of long hours at the school. Two times a week, two hours a day and sometimes more. This past week, we’ve worked every single day,” Christian said. “It’s a lot, but it’s worth it, just for this moment.”

Solving problems

All teams were given a common mission. This year’s assignment was to find a way that robotics could help solve a problem faced by seniors. Each team was to pick a senior person — someone they know or a celebrity whom they could research — to incorporate into the mission.

Christian’s team chose to focus on balance difficulties experienced by his grandfather, who has cancer.

“The chemo he gets messes with the sensitivity in his hands and feet,” 12-year-old teammate Michael Kajihara said. “So, we thought we’d try to work on that.”

Christian described the team’s product: “The idea is to possibly save lives,” he said. “Our project has stabilizers in the shoe and sock that stiffens up the lower part of your leg to keep you from tipping over.”

Parish Episcopal School’s seventh- and eighth-grade team also focused on balance issues in the elderly, 13-year-old Logan Krohn said.

“We’re doing something on balance loss,” Logan said. “It’s kind of like a standing Segway for a senior, except you don’t lean forward. It has a back brace that supports your trunk and your laterals. Not really any other equipment that we’ve seen does that.”

Career goals

Logan’s teammate, Kaya Willis, 13, said participating in the competition is in line with her career goals.

“I love everything that has to do with math and technology and building stuff,” Kaya said. “But I love math the most. Math is my life.”

Parish Episcopal sent 12 teams and 66 students to the competition, said Jennifer Makins, the school’s robotics coordinator. The school has a STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) curriculum that begins in prekindergarten, she said.

Witnessing her young students’ enthusiasm for science and engineering hits close to home for Makins.

“It’s super exciting for me,” she said. “I had good mentors show me the way and pay it forward, so I don’t know any other way.

“This competition makes these kids think. It’s the kids that run the show here,” she said.

Head judge Demetria Hall, a mechanical engineer for Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, said she saw a bit of herself as in the students competing.

“I knew this is something that I wanted to do, no doubt about it,” she recalled of her days as a young student in Port Arthur. “I knew what college I was going to go to, I knew what my major was going to be.

“It’s very amazing to see kids this young getting excited about engineering and science concepts and this field,” Hall said. “This is the time for them to get excited.”